


Find Your Way Home

by delazeur



Series: Are You There, Maker? It's Me, Marian. [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst, Because there's angst., Binge Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, Did I Mention Angst?, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hatesexing yourself is a thing, Hawke Needs a Hug, Here there be corpses, Kink Meme, Oral Sex, Post-All That Remains, Smiling makes my face ache, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 05:14:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 7,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delazeur/pseuds/delazeur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marian Hawke tries to find her way through her grief after All That Remains without leaning on Anders. He's a busy guy, manifestos to write, mages to save. She's sinking.</p>
<p>Based on kink meme prompt. Cross-posted with minor edits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Kink meme prompt: 
> 
> I just saw this http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx9plkAKXF1qkmgydo1_500.png on tumblr and I'd love to read a fic that has Anders being too caught up in his cause that Hawke feels extra alone after Leandra's death
> 
> But just like in the drawing Anders starts to notice and comforts Hawke 
> 
> -smut is welcome but not necessary  
> -default Marian Hawke?
> 
> thank u to whoever will fill this <3

It wasn’t as if she had never slept alone before. For years before Anders moved in. She could do it again. Had been for weeks. It was just getting harder. 

_Maker, Marian, your shit is in pieces._

_Thanks, me, duly noted._

The light was still shining from the crack beneath the study door, Chopper sprawled before it, nose snuffling at the gap. The mabari lifted his head, cocked it to the right, then whined. 

“Don’t let him work too late, boy.” 

The answering whine was more emphatic and she sighed, running her hands back through her hair.

“Marian Hawke, object of pity for even her dog. The one story Varric can’t sell.” 

Chopper stood and shifted to block her path to the bedroom, laying his ears back and wuffing softly. She glanced at the study door and rolled her shoulders, stretching her neck. “Fine. I’ll check, but he’s busy.” The dog let out a disapproving sneeze and she rolled her eyes. “Bully.” 

When she cracked open the door, easing it noiselessly on well-oiled hinges, she knew what she would find. The desk he worked at faced the wall on the left side of the room with the eastern windows. He would work until the sky lightened to a watery gray, kiss her good morning, and then slink down the cellar stairs to the clinic. Right now he would be scribbling furiously, hands spattered in ink, desperation curving his shoulders as if it were his final night on Thedas and this his last chance to get all those twisty, maddening, passionate words out.

_Is he snoring?_

She poked her head around the door and saw him sprawled across the desk, head pillowed on his arm, appalling coat draped on the back of his chair. He slept finally. If she woke him he would go back to work on the manifesto, promising to follow her to bed soon. He always broke that promise. Better to let him rest. 

Her bare feet were silent on the plush carpet. They would have been silent strapped with castanets, set to walking on a sheet of polished brass, but that was professional pride talking. There was really no chance she would wake him accidentally and so she pulled the quilt from the chaise near the fire and draped it gently over his shoulders. 

There was ink on the tip of his long nose, and his hair was falling loose from the thong in the back. Nimble fingers and a light touch freed it, and she let her hand ghost over the soft strands of gold in the candlelight. The tight ache behind her breastbone that never seemed to leave her anymore swelled upwards into her throat until she could barely swallow. She brushed a kiss against his brow and retreated. 

It might be sprawled on a desk instead of in her gigantic, empty, sexless and sleepless featherbed, but at least he would get some rest tonight. 

Compared to the study, warm with candles and a fire in the hearth, her bedroom was dark and cold, but there was a fresh bottle of brandy on the mantle. 

_Thank the Maker for dwarven servants. Drinking is always the answer._

Half a bottle in, the shadows were thicker but the cold wasn’t so troublesome, and if the patch of velvet duvet under her face was wet, she was a heavy sleeper, and sometimes she drooled. Out of her eyes. Salty, salty drool in stifled silence, alone in the dark. 

_Oh, Marian, your shit pieces are in pieces._

“Duly noted,” she slurred out of half her mouth as the room spun.

But at least that night she slept.


	2. Chapter 2

The tugging on the bottle she curled around caused Hawke to burrow deeper. “Mine,” she snarled. Well, that was the intent. Instead her ears, ringing with the rushing of her traitorous blood, all thin and boozy in her veins, mostly heard, “Mnnrrruuuurp.” 

The trip to her knees in the corner with the potted fern was a bit of a blur, but she was glad the plant was there. It probably needed to be watered. Or brandied. It was a bit of a lush, that fern. 

_Void take dwarven servants. Drinking is always the answer._

“Oh, sweet thing, what does it say about the state of your life that you don’t even have to look to find the nearest place to heave-ho in your bedroom? You could only make me prouder if there’d been a naked apostate, at least one tattooed elf, and me in the bed too.” 

One squinted eye took in what Hawke needed to see. “You are in my bed, Bells.” 

“But, alas, neither naked nor sticky. Sticky is the key.” Isabela reclined against the pillows, and swigged from the bottle. She had that infuriating cat-eyed smile flitting across her face. 

Hawke spat one more time into the fern and then groaned as she staggered to her feet. “Boots off the bed. Scratch that. Pirates off the bed. Let me die in peace.” She fell face down onto the covers, sprawled at the foot, and moaned.

_Dear Maker, please smite the pirate and the dwarves and the whole country of Antiva and the evil bastard who invented brandy and my skull. Thanks. Your friend, Marian. P.S. You should tell your best friend Sebastian Vael that it would be okay if he wanted to take his shirt off more often where other people could see. P.P.S. Please don’t tell Anders we talked._

The cracking slap on her ass was delivered with all the strength of Isabela’s strong, stab-happy arms and the shape of her calloused hand, hardened by rigging and helm, branded itself through the light robe Hawke had fallen asleep, and definitely not passed out, in. 

The scream it caused was the real pain though. There were definitely brains and blood and skull bits all over her bed now where her head exploded from the pressure and the sound. 

“Up you get,” Isabela sang out. She took another long swig of brandy before setting the bottle on the side table. “We’ve got things to do and people to stab, you and I.” 

_Don’t kill her. She’s your best friend. This is how she helps, Marian. Besides, you’ll need to surprise her. She’s likes it face-to-face. Bloody duels. Proper rogues do it from behind._

“I can think of one person I’ll be stabbing today.” But Hawke levered herself up, dragged herself through the bath, cinched herself into her armor, strapped on her daggers. By the time she was ready, Isabela was half in the bag, and the sun was going down. It was their time.


	3. Chapter 3

It had been a wild chase through the streets of Lowtown after the last of the Dog Lords. The scum had died. Of course they died. How could they not when Hawke and Isabela were hamstringing and slitting throats, Fenris was a constant explosion of viscera, and Varric was pinning them down and picking them off? It wasn’t the bloodiest of the outfits that Hawke ever fielded, but it was close and it suited her mood. The only time it was gorier was when Merrill was there but she couldn’t look at the Dalish mage anymore without tasting bile. 

It was when the killing was done and she’d wiped the blood from her eyes that she looked up and saw the door. 

The foundry door. 

_All those shit pieces, Marian, you hold them together. Hold them or they are going to know._

The silence told them what she wanted to hide, she figured. She had gone still and silent and she saw Varric and Fenris exchange glances while Isabela shifted so she was only looking at Hawke from the corner of her eyes. The ache behind her breastbone became hands that clawed up through her throat until it was fingers in her veins instead of blood, Quentin’s fingers pulling the strings of her mother’s puppet corpse, fingers that she could feel tapping in her throat and neck. 

She retched the sour ale Varric had poured into her before they left the Hanged Man right out onto her boots and their silence told her what she needed to know. 

_Smooth, Marian. Very smooth._

Varric called out as she strode away, but she didn’t stop until she was out of sight, hidden in the shadows. She crouched in an alley, hands buried in the sweat-stringy tangle of her hair, panting and spitting the last of her stomach’s contents between her feet. 

_Time to go home. If you can still call it that. Mum dead, Bethany dead, Carver dead, Papa dead. And what do you have left?_

“He won’t be there.” She swallowed the sigh that tried to follow that whisper. It was his night with Selby, planning things he wouldn’t tell her about no matter how many times she read drafts of his pamphlets, agreed with his call to rise for mages and their families. She’d killed… thirty four men tonight and it was too dangerous for her to be involved with his business? She trotted silently through the back alleys toward Hightown, taking the quickest, the quietest way because her eyes wouldn’t stop stinging and she really wanted to make friends with the rest of that bottle of brandy. 

It wasn’t until she’d flopped in her smalls and one of his overlong linen shirts onto her bed that she remembered. 

_Fucking Isabela fucking drank all the fucking brandy. ___

__Not so much sleep that night_ _


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leandra's corpse featured heavily here.

The sound of the feet slapping on the packed filth of the floor is what gets her. The floor is a tacky clay texture and the feet, they are not her feet, they are the feet that she wears like shoes on the end of her legs, they slap against it with the sound of meat being slapped against a butcher’s block. 

Uneven steps. Shuffling steps. Wet, dead fish slapping steps. 

_Oh, Mama._

Afterwards, after she is gone because no one can help, Anders couldn’t, it was a filthy, evil thing and she was happy, so happy to leave because over there she has family, Bethy, Carver, Papa, her own parents, and here there was only Marian, afterwards it is the eyes. 

She has only been dead hours. Only hours. The film on her eyes is cold. The eyes are unevenly closed, but instead of shutting them, Hawke brushes them wider with her thumbs. She has only been gone moments, dead hours, but gone moments, and why isn’t she still in there? The body in her arms is wrong, the wrong shape, the wrong weight, folding in places it shouldn’t and smelling sour and slick like lye, but she should still be in there. 

Why isn’t she still in there? Hawke’s own tears fall and pool against those eyes and the film dissolves and there is a sparkle that says something has changed, that it was a lie and she has come back. But no blinking, pupils blown until the iris is black, but shouldn’t there be somebody in there? 

_Oh, Mama, where did you go?_

Hawke leans so close her eyelashes almost brush the ones frozen open before she realizes the glimmer is the shifting light of the torches behind her. She is not Andraste. Her tears will not raise the dead nor redeem humanity. There is no redeeming it. No one should want to. 

The skin under her lips is cold and loose as she presses her mouth against the forehead, the bridge of the nose, the lips of the face, the only part that is still right in this woman-shaped pile of wrong. She can smell the sick-sweet of bowels. She’s stabbed enough people in the guts to know it. The spit in the mouth has thickened, smells sour like the tacky coating come morning, but there is no more breath. She keeps gently raining her kisses on the too-soft-too-stiff skin until large, metal clad hands take the parts, they are not a body, they are parts in the shape of a body, from her lap. 

Other hands, soft and warm, long-fingered, the ones that have always reached all parts of her take her arms and draw her up from the clammy dirt floor and away, but once they get home

_Can you still call it a home?_

they don’t seem to know how to reach her at all anymore.


	5. Chapter 5

There was a sound. That was why she was awake, arms tensed, hand tight around the hilt of the knife she keeps under her pillow. It was a small blade as far as these things go, but after Carta dwarves falling in her windows in the middle of the night at the behest of ancient Tevinter magisters, she’d decided to never go to bed without a knife where she could reach it. 

The sound was a shuffling, the sound of fabric falling, and when the mattress dipped behind her Hawke rolled from her side up and over until her knee was pressed brutally into the spine of the intruder just above his hips, left hand wound in his hair, wrenching his head back, and the blade pressed against his throat.

“I’m not going to lie and say this is my favorite game we’ve ever played.” Trying for droll warmth, he managed strained hysteria. 

Hawke’s hands sprang open and she shoved herself backwards off of her lover until her elbow cracked against the footboard of the bed. 

“Shit. Shit, Anders. Shit. What are you doing here? Are you okay?” 

“I thought I lived here. Did that change recently?” He picked up the knife she’d left at his side between his thumb and forefinger and held it out to her like it was a truly smelly sock. He was still dressed aside from his coat which was lying on the floor in a shapeless mound. 

“Recently?” Hawke snatched the dagger from his hand and stabbed it into the bedpost hard enough for the wood to give an alarming crack. 

The lean form of the mage rolled onto his side, and with a flick of his fingers the candle sconces on the wall came alight. The glow was warm and soft on his hair and skin, gathering in his eyes like sunlight in amber. Hawke was pretty sure it made her look sallow and ill. Moonlight was her thing. Or starlight. Cold, pale skin, eyes that had been at times called Fade-blue by reckless wags who had never seen an actual Fade spirit try to break out through the skin of someone they loved. Hers were a bit darker than that. 

“You look terrible.” Anders furrowed his brow, looking puzzled. It was an expression that always made her want to press gentle kisses to his perpetually pouting lower lip, spread them over his eyelids and cheekbones, up his narrow nose. 

_Maker, he’s a giant kitten. Who just said you look terrible. You could still stab him._

Hawke barked a laugh and pulled the dagger from where she’d embedded it in the bedpost. She looked at him from beneath her lashes as she used the tip to dig dirt that she could not see from under her nails. “You sure know how to sweet talk a girl.” 

“Maker, that isn’t what I… Isabela rousted me out of the clinic, put a boot in my ass and told me you were ill. Are you still feeling sick?” The long fingers of his hand glowed as he raised it toward her, but before she could feel the faintest warmth of his healing against the bare skin of her leg she stabbed the tip of his outstretched forefinger with the point of her knife. 

“Isabela should mind her own fucking business.” 

It was only a little stab. Barely more than the prick of a needle. “Maker, Marian!” He jerked his hand back and stuck the tip of his finger in his mouth, though she was pretty sure the puncture had stopped bleeding and closed before he got it to his lips.

_Varric is going to have to update the to-do list. Item one: find an appropriate time and place to murder your best friend._

“Sorry.” She wasn’t. She might have been sorry had she stabbed him through his whole hand, but a finger prick? He was a big kid. “You staying long?” She leaned over and eyed feet still encased in boots. “Got some important… things to do back in Darktown tonight?” 

His hand left his mouth and reached toward her again, this time not glowing, so she didn’t stab him before it settled around her ankle. The damp, formerly stabbed pad of his finger traced her hamstring slowly. “Well, there are important things I could do. Just not in Darktown.” His mouth curved into a lazy smirk as he let his gaze slide up Hawke’s folded legs to where they disappeared under the shirt, his void-taken shirt, she was wearing. 

_New item one: find appropriate place to hide body of formerly live-in apostate lover._

The expression that Hawke felt settle onto her features was one that her friends often called her “murder face.” Soft, sly smile, half-lidded eyes, slight chin tuck. It was, according to Isabela, a scary face pretending to be a sexy face. A scexy face? Scarxy? She’d never been able to make that work. The difference, as described by Varric, was in her nose. When her nostrils flared ever so slightly and the skin of her upper lip paled, she was like a wolf scenting blood. Or so the dwarf said and after a moment’s consideration, even Fenris had agreed. 

Anders knew about her murder face. His hand froze on her ankle as he studied her. He sat up, slowly drawing the hand away and holding it wide along with his other one in a gesture of surrender. “I guess I’ll just go then?” His mouth was doing that tender moue thing that drove her crazy. She just wanted to suck his lower lip right off his face. His eyes were all soft and hurt, but she turned away and slid off the bed. 

“Mmm.” Hawke moved to the wall sconces on one side of the bed and blew them out, then walked around the bed to the other side to blow out the candles there, before wriggling under the covers. She curled into a ball with her back to him, eyes burning with candle smoke and murder, and possibly salty eye-drool, but certainly not tears. He sighed heavily and stood. 

“I thought maybe dinner tomorrow?” His voice is so soft, full of sadness. It was receding like he was being sucked out to sea away from her and she wanted to catch at his hands and scream at him to never swim in the ocean again because didn’t he know that she was drowning right here on dry land without him? But he was the one who needed, and she was strong and had everything to give. Nearly a month on and everyone relied on her to be back at it, top form, normal in her deviant, lawless ways. 

“If you like. What time?” 

“Eighth bell?” 

“I’ll let Orana know.” 

“Okay then. Goodnight?” 

“Mmm.” She listened to him shift, the leather of his boots creaking, before the jangling of the buckles on his coat as he pulled it back on told her he was going. When she heard the footsteps recede from her… no, their bedroom door she trembled, refusing the tears, refusing the sobs, just sucking in dry soughs of air and shaking under the blankets of a bed they hadn’t shared in weeks.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buffy reference and Fenris is a jolly drunk when it comes at Anders' expense. 
> 
> And then, more angst.

Hawke was drunk. Delightfully, lets-go-steal-the-Grand-Cleric’s-knickers drunk. 

It was already past eleven bells gone when the door to the cellars eased open in the kitchen. Hawke heard it because she was sitting at the large square table that served for informal meals. The remnants of the dinner Orana had made for her and Anders were scattered over it, a chicken carcass picked clean, the ends of a loaf of bread, the berry sauce completely gone because Fenris put that on everything he was allowed to, and a nearly empty dish of wrinkled roast vegetables resting in a congealed puddle of chicken fat. Anders hadn’t eaten the dinner with her, but Fenris had.

Fenris was drunk as well, leaning across the table, shoulders shaking with laughter as he wagged a finger in Hawke’s face. His face was trying, failing, but trying to maintain all the angles and creases of the scowls that Hawke had come to find so endearing. 

She knew Anders was in the doorway behind her, of course she knew, it was her house and even drunk as she was the moment the air pressure changed from the cellar hatch opening she felt it in her ears. She pretended he wasn’t there though as she grabbed Fenris’ outstretched finger and giggling, said, “You know, your face is a poem.” 

Fenris could probably see Anders, but he was scowling fondly at the fist gripping his finger. “A… poem?” 

“I can read it.” 

_Really, Marian? Are you doing this now?_

_Shut up, me, it isn’t flirting. It is friendly._

“Can you now?” Fenris shifted in his seat, leaning a little closer, his low, gravelly voice a relaxed drawl. It was a tone Hawke loved, and was pretty sure only she got to hear regularly, and only over… she glanced at the table… eight and a half bottles of wine. 

She closed one eye as she peered at Fenris and then opened it again. “Yep. You do a thing here…” She reached out with her free hand and brushed the hair off his forehead and ran the tip of her finger down between his brows. “...it means ‘It would be easiest to hate you, but I find myself incapable of resisting your charms, Hawke.’” Her hand brushed further to the corner of his mouth and she murmured, “And right here says, ‘suck it, abomination, your woman is petting my face.’”

_Shit. Marian. Shit. A truly classy fuckup of an orphan who is also an asshole, you. No wonder Anders can’t stand to spend more than ten minutes at a time with you anymore._

“Which, I admit, doesn’t rhyme. So you’re face is a pretty bad poem, Fenris. Good face though.” 

Fenris’ face went still for a moment as his eyes flicked up to the doorway behind Hawke and then he snorted and shook his head. “You’re drunk, Hawke. Go home.” 

“I am home! I guess. It isn’t much of a home anymore, is it?” The maudlin crash took her by surprise and she sat back in her chair, reaching for the remaining half bottle of wine. 

“Aaaand we’re done!” Anders’ voice was loud and clipped. His hands settled on her shoulders, squeezing gently. “Fenris, would you mind?” 

The elf slipped out of the chair and bowed his head. “Hawke, it has been a pleasure.” 

“Traitor.” 

“Abomination, thank you for once again neglecting Marian so that I might enjoy her company.” 

The hands on her shoulders tightened briefly, but if Anders had any response it had no auditory component that Hawke could hear. She tilted her head back, trying to look up at him, but the room was too swimmy to make much of it. Instead she canted her head to look at the elf. “You’ve earned clemency, Fenris. Stay of execution. Whatever. See you tomorrow for some of the choppity-stab?” 

“Indeed. I enjoy following you. For… choppity-stab.” The clearing of his throat sounded mightily like a suppressed snicker before the elf left the kitchen.

_Not awkward. It’s Anders. You love him. Live with him, even. Totally not awkward to find you petting the face of the elf he hates almost as much as Knight-Commander Meredith._

Hawke shifted and stood, sliding out from under Anders’ hands and turned to leave the kitchen. 

“Marian?” 

She waved a hand vaguely over her shoulder. Waving him off? Beckoning him to follow? She had no idea. 

“Marian.” 

The doorway into the central hall had always had an attitude problem and it nearly knocked Hawke down as she tried to sidle past the jamb. Anders hands were there again, gentle and steadying this time. 

“Honestly, Marian. How much of that wine did you drink?” 

“All of it! You were supposed to be home three hours ago, so I dragged Fenris over to eat the food that was meant for you and we decided to drink all of it. All. The. Wine.” She rounded on him and stumbled as the room decided not to remain strictly room-shaped for a moment. “So come on, scold me! Don’t drink so much, don’t flirt with the former slave, what will the neighbors think, how will you ever attract a husband of good character with those kinds of friends, try to keep decent hours or you’ll get bags and wrinkles.” Why is her voice trembling, stretching higher and thinner as she turns her face up toward him? “You sound like my fucking mother, Anders.” 

_Oh, Mama, where did you go?_

Was he making a face at her? Frowning? Scowling? Smirking? She couldn’t tell. The unruly room was now blurry and wet and running down her cheeks. The hard, aching knot was a collapsing tunnel in her chest and she doubled over suddenly trying to gasp in air so that she could sob it back out. She could feel words tangled with the air escaping her, all _please_ and _let go_ and _let me go_ and _I have to go_ and _I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry_. But none of those words made it out of her throat beyond a ragged, formless keen.

If the arms weren’t around her now she would be in pieces, parts, fallen and dead on the floor. She wasn’t sure they made a whole person, or if she was patchwork, broken, bending in the wrong places. His face was against her hair and the warmth of his breath made words she couldn’t hear, maybe didn’t want to hear. She just let him steer her, stumbling and drunk, up the stairs to her room. When he put her to bed she tried to hold tight to his hand, gripping his fingers in hers, but before she was asleep they were already gone. 

Eventually she dreamed of waves crashing in over her as she floated up and drowned pressed against the ceiling, and the body they found was the color of dead fish.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longer chapter. Finally some sexing. Angsty sexing.

When her eyes opened there was a shocking lack of pain associated with the early morning light that flooded across the pillow. She was also warmer than normal. And someone else was breathing nearby. She turned over and frowned at his back. 

_That’s unexpected. Other than the fact that he’s on top of the blankets and still dressed and looks for all the world like sleeping in your shared bed with you was a complete accident._

Her hand went looking for the dagger of its own accord. It was under the pillow that his head was on and when she found it his hand was already wrapped over the hilt. His fingers twitched when she tried to ferret the blade away and he rolled onto his back, head falling to the side so that she could see his eyes as they studied her. 

“Were you going to try to stab me again?” He brought the knife out and offered it to her.

She snorted. “Try? I don’t try to stab things. I stab them.” She took the knife and sat up, throwing with a sharp snap of her wrist. It quivered where it ended embedded in the door. 

_Everyone is safer with the sharp objects out of reach. First good decision of your whole life._

“How are you feeling?” His hand was warm on the small of her back as it rubbed in a slow circle.

“Like an idiot. I drank half the wine cellar and told Fenris his face was a poem.” She drew her knees up to her chest and buried her face there. “You already healed my hangover, didn’t you?” 

“I suppose. Alcohol is a simpler poison than spider venom. I helped you along with it so you’d be sober before I had to leave.” 

His fingers smoothed over her shirt to the top of her spine and back down again. It should have been soothing. Instead it just inflamed the hollow place in her middle. 

_Ah, yes, he’s leaving. Of course he is. Try not to lose your mind before he’s out of the building, Marian._

“Back to the clinic, then?” She rested her cheek on her knee, face angled toward him, but she kept her eyes closed. No reason to try to show him what was in there. He wouldn’t look, couldn’t read it if he did, because it was emptiness and that wasn’t something he ever seemed to notice in anyone else. 

“I… I could stay, if you want.” 

“If I want.” 

“I wouldn’t want to intrude.” 

_Intrude?_

“Intrude?” She cracked an eye and frowned as she looked at him. 

He was sitting up, one leg curled before him, the other draped off the edge of the bed. Already halfway gone, but his head was tilted to look at her and his eyes were searching her face for something while his brow was knit in concern.

_Stupid sad kitten face._

“It sounded like you and Fenris had plans to…” The fingers on her back stilled for a moment and then moved to scritch up the back of her neck. 

“Mmm?” 

“To kill things. I think the word was choppity-stab?” 

The breath she exhaled was heavy, ragged at the end. “It gives me something to do. Other than thinking about…” She shrugged and shifted to scoot off the other side of the bed, away from him. 

“About?” 

There was a new plant in the corner where the fern used to be. And an empty ornamental urn sat nearby. 

_Maker bless dwarven servants._

She picked one of the leaves off the glossy green pile of vines and started shredding it, back to Anders. Her close-trimmed thumbnail pressed through the waxy surface of the leaf in shallow crescents that she flicked into the urn. 

“What have you been thinking about, love?” 

“Being alone, mostly.” She shot a look over her shoulder at him and she caught his eyes as he was shrugging his coat back on. He froze with it on his elbows, lips parted as if in surprise. “You’re leaving then. Good. I hope you save lots of people, today.” She forces the smile that says it’s all perfectly fine, all of it will be great, no reason to worry or even look twice. 

“Oh, Mae.” It was only when he was being so sweet it made her teeth hurt he called her that. If she kept looking at him now she might have to break his nose. He was trying to be kind. 

_Don’t, please don’t. Please._

She jerked her eyes away from his and tossed the skeleton of the leaf, only the stem and veins left, all the flesh stripped away, grotesque really, onto the cold hearth. “I’m going to have a bath. Make sure you eat something before you go, okay?” He wouldn’t, she knew he wouldn’t, but it was something to say that ignored the sudden flickers of pity in his face. 

He caught her at the door, one hand on her shoulder, the other pressed against her cheek. “Look at me, love. Please.” 

She considered for a moment, eyes fixed on the handle of the dagger that protruded from the door behind him. Stabbing was one of her go-to strategies. But with him it wasn’t the only one. Two fistfulls of feathers and her mouth was crushed over his, tongue begging to taste him. His eyes widened as his mouth opened in surprise or protest, but by then it was too late. He was already gone. 

She towed him under with her insistence. He was taller, but too thin, and she was wiry muscle and hands that killed people. He really couldn’t do much to fend her off as she spun and tripped him down onto the ground. It was a gentle tumble that ended with her straddling his hips, hands buried in his hair as she pulled it loose from the tie he wore. 

He smelled like elfroot and ink and old sweat as she dragged her teeth over his throat. She gasped against his skin when his hands finally filled themselves with her breasts, and she knew she’d won. She ground against him and then slid down to sit on his thighs so that she could jerk open the laces of his breeches. 

He wasn’t hard when she pulled him free, but that was at least a thing she thought she could fix. She took his warm, pliant flesh into her mouth whole and worked her tongue along the underside. She sucked and kneaded tasting the salt and the sweat of him past the sour remnant of last night’s wine in her mouth and was rewarded as she felt him swell on her tongue, his root thrusting against her lips. 

“Mae,” he said hoarsely, and his hands tried to pet her face but she slapped them away. Eyes closed, she pulled back slowly, hollowing her cheeks and then dove back down, hands gripping his hips hard enough to bruise. 

She shifted until she was kneeling between his legs and released his hips. He started thrusting up into her face and she let him have her mouth while her hands worked her trousers down over her hips and off her legs. She was spry like that and it had always been a game to get them naked while he was distracted. 

_Don’t need him naked. Just need him inside._

Hawke pushed his hips back down and knelt up, letting a strand of saliva trail from his cock to her lips before she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She straddled him again, tugging her smalls to the side, not even bothering to take them off like her trousers. She parted the coarse curls with one hand and shifted his spit-slicked cock at her entrance with the other. She wasn’t ready, wasn’t wet, but she didn’t care. She pushed down on him hard and he was the one who cried out. 

His hands tried to pull at her shirt but she grabbed his wrists and placed his palms on her hips. “Hard.” There was a soft sigh from him, but she kept her hands on his wrists until he sank his fingers into her skin. 

She rode him with her eyes closed, hands fisted in the front of his shirt. She lifted herself up and slammed back down, his hands gripping her hips and jerking her against him as he thrust up under her. It hurt. The bruising against her pubis, the strain in the tendons as her hips spread so wide, the stretch and burn of him inside after weeks of nothing. It hurt like she wanted it to. 

The rhythm of his thrusts started to stutter, out of time with the way he jerked her down. Hawke opened her eyes to look at him, where his head was arched back and, lips parted. His own eyes were closed now as he let her ride him hard to climax. It was merciless, without finesse, just the grip of her muscles around him, and the thunderous beat of his heart against the knuckles of her balled fists. 

The sudden pulling of her hips against him, cock buried in her as far as she could find room for it, signaled his orgasm and she clenched as hard as she could against the spasm inside her. 

“Hawke! Oh fuck, Maker fuck me, Hawke!” There was a sudden urge to slap him, to make him look at her, to demand who he was thinking about when he called for Hawke instead of Marian. Who was he fucking? The woman he lived with or the murderous madwoman who used to stumble bleeding and laughing into his clinic hours before dawn? 

_Can’t really blame him, Marian. You can’t keep your shit from falling apart. Hawke is the one who fucks and fights and lives._

The burning was back in her eyes and she slipped off of him, dragging a trail of his come across the hip of his breeches, tugging her smallclothes back in order with cold fingers. She kicked her trousers up with her foot, caught them in the air, and draped them over her shoulder. At the doorway to her bath chamber she paused, throwing a glance at him still sprawled on the floor, looking up at her with his pretty honeyed eyes and pink mouth, a little wanton, a little glazed. “I meant it. I hope you save a lot of people today, Anders.” She locked the door behind her. 


	8. Chapter 8

A light was burning in the study window. Hawke could see it from the street. It was between third and fourth bell after midnight. She sighed. 

_At least he came home?_

Unsteady steps carried her up the stairs and she tried to be quiet as she passed the study. The low growl that trailed into a whine from the other side of the door startled her. 

“Fuck. Maker’s smelly asshole, Chopper,” She hissed and opened the door with her left hand. Her right arm crossed over her stomach to steady the ribs she had likely broken being pushed down the long stairs by the dry dock and timber warehouse. She waited for the dog to follow her out, but the door handle was pulled from her grasp on the other side. Anders looked at her with wide eyes, alarm tightening his mouth. 

_There’s that dog feeling sorry for you again, Marian. Throwing you under the cart._

She shifted. “Didn’t want to bother you. Got potions. Just wanted to clean out the open wounds first.” She nodded with her chin behind him in the room. “I know it’s important. Won’t keep you. Come on, Chopper.” 

He was still staring at her and she felt a rising tide of nausea as she saw his brown eyes grow damp. Both his hands were stained, black blotches of ink looking like dead spots on his skin when he reached for her. She would dodge him but she was so fucking tired that she barely managed to flinch back. His lips practically disappeared as he grabbed the back of her neck with one hand and pushed her hair away from her temple with the other. 

“Marian, nothing, nothing is as important to me as you.” 

“You’re pretty and I love you, but you’re a terrible liar, Anders.” She cleared her throat hard after it cracked on his name. 

“Look at me, Mae.” He leaned his forehead against hers. “I am so sorry. I didn’t realize you…” 

“You’re getting blood on your face.” She flicked her eyes up toward his forehead. “I’m not even sure whose blood that is.” 

“Don’t care. I love you.” 

“You’re making you blush. And you’re an idiot.” 

“Don’t care. I love you.” 

She tried to pull back from his hands, eyes pricking and sore. “Please, let go. I… I smell like a charnel house.” Why was he doing this? He wasn’t allowed to suddenly see her. 

“I don’t care. I love you.” There was a soft laugh in his voice, his eyes warm as he looked at her. 

It was the warmth that did it. He wasn’t allowed to look happy to see her. He wasn’t allowed to think he could make it just be alright. “Yeah, and what’s that going to get you, Anders? Murdered? Dismembered? Shallow grave? You say it like it’s worth something, but it never seems to get anybody anywhere but super dead.” Her cheeks were wet and she was absolutely not going to cry now.

_It is much too late for that, isn’t it, Marian?_

“Oh, sweetheart.” He hugged her close against his chest, and she struggled to push him back but the pain in her ribs just made her gasp. 

“Let me go. I have to go.” Her voice was an embarrassing mewl.

“Where are you going to go, love?” His face pressed against the bloody mess of her matted hair like he didn’t care about anything but her and what did that mean? 

“I just need to go. I want to go home. Please. Please, Anders, I want to go home.” She should be able to stand but she found herself clutching to him to hold her up as she gasped in wet air, sobs she didn’t remember starting boiling out of her. 

“Marian. Mae. You are home. You’re home. Oh love, I’m here. You’re home.” He was warm and solid and smelled of mildewed feathers and damp dust. She could fool herself it was the smell of Ferelden for a moment, and that she was home while he held her and she finally wept. “I’m here for you, love. You are the best thing in my life. I will always be here. You’re home.” 

She let him wash her hair, and heal her wounds, take her to bed and this time when he entered her she called his name and buried her face in his neck and clawed at his back when she came. She would let him be right, let it be true. Wrapped in his warmth, naked in their bed, she would hold onto him, let him be what she needed. She would believe him, believe that she could save him when she had failed everyone else, and maybe it would eventually be true.


	9. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short bit of endgame. Thanks for reading.

Four years later she looks at the fell light shining red against the sky, tears on her cheeks and the ash of the dead on her tongue. She grips his hand so tightly that the rising tide of darkness and war will never part them and whispers, “You’re pretty and I love you. But you were always a terrible liar, Anders.” He looks at her, startled, and she smiles sadly that he never understood before that his wars were hers as soon as he chose a side. 

He is here, with her, and that will always be home.


End file.
